EF2 tornado, Curran to Beamington, Illinois, June 29, 2023

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF2

Date

June 29, 2023

Touchdown

12:12 PM CDT (17:12 UTC)

Lifted

12:19 PM CDT (17:19 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

9.1 miles (14.6 km)

Path width

800 yards (732 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Sangamon County

Touchdown point

39.719, -89.772

Lift-off point

39.649, -89.628

Record number

2306291112-01

92 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Damage to deck and tree branches
• 2 ft diameter tree trunk snapped
• Corn flatten just out of sight to the south
• Wide swath of tree branches snapped off and twisted

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A cluster of thunderstorms that initiated during the night of June 28th across the Central Plains entered west-central Illinois by the late morning of June 29th. Aided by an increasingly unstable airmass characterized by CAPE values of 3000-4000J/kg and a 30-40kt mid-level jet streak, the storms became linear in nature and began racing east-southeastward across central Illinois. Widespread wind gusts of 60-80mph were observed along the line, with localized corridors of even higher gusts. The highest measured gust of 101 mph came from a personal weather station near Taylorville that took a direct hit from a tornado. A total of seven tornadoes were embedded within the line of storms, including an EF-2 tornado near Curran in Sangamon County. The high winds caused extensive tree and power line damage, leading to power loss for over 200,000 customers. Some people in the Springfield area were without power for nearly a week before all lines were restored. The winds impacted all of central and southeast Illinois, but were most concentrated between the I-74 and I-70 corridors. Once the line of storms dropped into the Ohio River Valley, additional severe cells fired along the trailing outflow boundary south of I-70 during the late afternoon. These storms produced hail as large as 2 inches in diameter across parts of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence counties.

A tornado touched down near the intersection of Curran Road and Spaulding Orchard Road about 1 mile south of Curran at 12:12 PM CDT. It removed large sections of the roof of a home, then continued to track southeastward into the town of Chatham where it blew down numerous trees, tree branches, and power lines. The tornado also ripped approximately half the roof off a home in Chatham. It downed several large trees and tore shingles off homes in a subdivision just southeast of Chatham before crossing I-55 and dissipating about 2 miles north-northeast of Glenarm at 12:19 PM CDT.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

0 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 17:12 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 15:34 UTC and running to 18:40 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 17:18 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Springfield (SPI), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 60 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:12 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2023 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

7 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.